Claudia was supposed to be in the room for the birth. The doula had suggested Edie Castro choose one person to hold each leg, and she’d picked her new husband, Nathan, and her little sister. But when Edie called from the backseat of the taxi traveling up First Avenue, Claudia’s phone just rang and rang.

“It’s me,” Edie said to the voice mail. “My water broke. I’m on my way.”

She hung up and texted the same message.

A contraction came and she stretched back, trying to straighten her legs, as if she could make the cramp spread out; curl her toes instead of her writhing middle. Nathan reached for her hand and hit the button on the app to record the duration of her pain. It was just after midnight. Outside the windows the lights of the city smeared by. They pulled up to Emergency and Nathan jogged in to get a wheelchair.

Edie texted her parents and Claudia again from the intake area. Once they got in a room, Nathan set up a laptop and a speaker, but there were only four songs on the birth playlist they’d started back in January. Neither of them were ready for this.

But Claudia didn’t rattle. When Claudia got here, it would be all right.

An hour passed and Edie lost count of the strangers coming in and going out of the room, looking at the monitor she was attached to, helping her squat over a bin to pee. Finally, just after dawn, the doctor asked if she felt like she should start pushing. At 7:07 a.m., a 5-pound 9-ounce little girl came shooting out into the world, squint-eyed and crying. Edie was crying, too, her arm thrown over her eyes. They sewed her up and put the baby on her chest. Edie looked down and saw the hair on the girl’s head. What was she supposed to feel? What was she supposed to do? Where was Claudia?

The nurses took the baby to be inspected, and Edie and Nathan were alone in the room for the first time since they’d arrived. She was supposed to have given birth in their little rental house in Poughkeespie with the midwife she’d chosen. She was supposed to be surrounded by candles. She was supposed to be able to lay her head back on her own pillows and gaze at the photographs she’d taken of the places and people who made her feel happy and strong. But that plan dissolved when her mother had announced that if Edie didn’t have the baby in the city, at “the best” hospital, she’d lose access to her trust fund. So now she was shivering in a room where the lights never seemed to go down and the machines never stopped buzzing. She closed her eyes and asked Nathan for a blanket.

“I can’t believe how great you did,” he said.